SEASIDE IN CROATIA

Centuries-old scenery, history await as American tourists rediscover the Dalmatian coast

If you go

Getting there: A number of airlines fly to Croatia, including American, Lufthansa and Austrian, in combination with Croatia Airlines.

Tours and lodging: An all-inclusive package is a more convenient option, although the higher-end walking tours offered by companies like The Wayfarers, Backroads and Classic Journeys can be pricey. A weeklong tour is around $4,200 per person, including meals, lodging, transportation in Croatia and tour guides. To learn more about the Wayfarers tour, go online to
thewayfarers.com. Ante Batarelo, our tour guide, offers custom tours via his website, at privateguidesincroatia.com.

DUBROVNIK, Croatia 
Dusk had arrived, and I’d settled in for some serious people-watching at one of the many outdoor cafes lining the wide promenade of Dubrovnik’s Old Town. Suddenly, my husband, J.W., grabbed me by the shoulders, swiveled me around and shouted, “Look, it’s him, it’s him.” n He bolted from his chair, grabbed his camera and sprinted along the glossy limestone of the town’s main walkway, already congested with people out for an evening stroll.

Within moments, he returned, beaming triumphantly as he showed me the photo he’d just shot. There was my husband, crouching next to the 4-foot-5-inch actor Peter Dinklage, one of the stars of HBO’s “Game of Thrones.” Later we would learn that the crew was in Dubrovnik shooting scenes for the third season of the medieval fantasy television series.

And what better location for the show’s mythical towns than a seaside walled medieval city like Dubrovnik, its stone walls and fortresses well preserved since being erected largely between the 12th and 17th centuries.

While Croatia’s Dalmatian coast has long been a favored destination among Europeans, its tourism industry took a heavy blow following the bitter breakup of Yugoslavia during the early 1990s war of independence. Only in recent years has it been rediscovered by American travelers — and even more recently by Hollywood.

Dubrovnik had a starring role last year in Season 8 of “The Bachelorette,” which taped an episode there. And the stunning coastline was one of the stops for Ashley Judd’s character in the now defunct ABC series “Missing” during her globe-trotting hunt for her kidnapped son.

Often referred to as the “jewel of the Adriatic,” Dubrovnik was our first stop on a weeklong tour of the Dalmatian coast, organized by the England-based tour company The Wayfarers. Our meals and lodging, mostly in higher-end waterfront hotels, were included, as was all transportation within Croatia.

While heavy on hiking through forested and seaside trails, our journey also included a number of boat rides that ferried us to charming island towns and rural outposts heavily dependent on summer tourists. In between long hikes and more leisurely walks that averaged five to eight miles a day, we dined with locals who warmly greeted us with homemade brandies, flavored with figs and walnuts, and served us fish caught the same day.

We visited still operating salt flats dating back to Roman times (I’m now seasoning my home-cooked food with salt crystals I purchased from a vendor). And we clambered up to the top of a medieval-era defensive stone wall that is the second largest such wall in the world, right after the Great Wall of China.

In many ways the Croatian coastline — just across the Adriatic from Italy — is reminiscent of the Mediterranean, its seaside homes, with their orange-tiled roofs, hugging the hillsides and olive trees and vineyards growing along the slopes overlooking the sea.

Old Dubrovnik

You can venture into the more remote island villages where the residents still live off the land, or soak up the cosmopolitan, old-world feel of Dubrovnik, which The New York Times has likened to the “St. Tropez of the Balkans.” Ancient history is everywhere, even in Split, Croatia’s second most populous city, dominated by a sprawling Roman-era palace.

Before embarking on our group tour, J.W. and I explored on our own Dubrovnik’s Old Town, an area completely free of vehicular traffic, which became an issue for us when the airport bus dropped us off at the walled city’s main gate. Laden down as we were with multiple pieces of baggage, we were saved when the landlord of our apartment, after several desperate phone calls, sent us a “luggage boy” to help us navigate the 1,000-foot-long main street leading to our lodging.

While it’s relatively easy to see much of Dubrovnik in a day, two days are even better, allowing you time for a ferry excursion to the nearby island of Lokrum (also a filming location for “Game of Thrones”) and a ride on the recently renovated cable car that transports visitors to a mountaintop affording magnificent views of the city and surrounding sea.

A stroll up and down the cobblestone-lined Stradun, bookended by the two town gates, Pile and Ploce, offers a quick introduction to Old Town’s sights, from the domed Onofrio’s fountain that was a source of water during the Middle Ages to the Sponza Palace, a meld of Renaissance and Venetian Gothic architecture from the 16th century that at one time was the customs office. It now houses archives of the city and a memorial honoring those who lost their lives defending Dubrovnik in the early War of Independence.

In Dubrovnik as in the rest of coastal Croatia, you’ll see amid the beauty reminders of the bitter war: roofs and building facades pockmarked by bullets, dated structures whose owners have yet to restore and modernize them.

The best vantage point for capturing a sense of the old city is a walk along the city walls, one of the first things we did when we joined our Wayfarers group of five fellow travelers. While we had a dedicated guide throughout our tour, for the walk along the walls we were led by a local guide, Luka, whose boyish good looks and blond hair made him a dead ringer for a Southern California surfer.

We climbed the 70 steps to the top of the 1¼-mile-long town wall, which offers terrific vistas of the azure waters of the Adriatic and the nearby stone fortresses. But there are also snapshots of everyday life: drying laundry, a community garden, a small group of schoolchildren playing soccer.

Coastal trek

Earlier that day, we had eased into the daily regimen of hiking (broken up by juice and snack breaks and hearty, often lavish lunches) with a walk through smaller villages south of Dubrovnik, eventually making our way to the seaside town of Cavtat, just 12 miles away.

It is like many of the coastal and island towns that see their populations triple and quadruple during the high summer season when the cruise ships disgorge thousands of passengers at ports along the Adriatic.

Our path to Cavtat was an extremely rocky one. Looking down was a must, lest you stumble. One side of the trail was bordered by merlot vineyards, the other by olive groves. Tall, slender Mediterranean pines and cypress trees shaded the way as we coped with the unseasonably warm, humid weather.

As we headed toward the sea, our guide, Ante Batarelo, originally from Australia, pointed out the hillsides where there are now just a few vineyards. In years past, the slopes would have been blanketed with vines and olive trees. But since the 1960s, the land has been gradually subdivided into smaller parcels as the area moved from agriculture to tourism, responsible for 20 percent of Croatia’s economy; the percentage is even larger for the Dalmatian coast, situated on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea.

When we visited during the very end of September, the heavy tourist season was just ending, and a sleepy charm inhabited Cavtat, a relief from the crowded Dubrovnik waterfront. A few boats were gliding across the harbor; a terrace restaurant was half empty.

One of my favorite days was a trek on the island of Brac, Croatia’s third largest island. We were led by Ivana, a local, plain-spoken guide who at times seemed almost contemptuous of the tourists. (“I like when summer is over,” she told me. “We have the beach to ourselves. I can pick my own spot, no tourists.”)

As we sweated our way up one of the more challenging ascents, she quizzed us on the herbs growing along our path. She’d pluck from the ground sprigs of fragrant myrtle, oregano, sage and rosemary, rubbing them between her fingers to release the scent.

Unfortunately, there remain large parts of the landscape that are charred, the result of a 2011 fire that ravaged the western part of the island, destroying the pine forest, vineyards and olive groves.

“From a stupid tourist grilling something,” Ivana sniffed.

Lunch was at a local tavern in Sutivan, where we’d been told the chef employs a rather odd cooking technique. Sure enough, we watched him as he stoked the coals of the oven with an electric hair dryer.

That evening, at our waterfront hotel in the island town of Postira (at the time situated not so ideally next to a sardine factory), we slept soundly, soothed by the lullaby of waves gently lapping at the stones.

That was fortunate, girding us as it did for a morning trek from the uppermost peak on Brac, down a steep gorge to the now abandoned 16th century Glagolitic Monastery. Established by Glagolitic monks who fled to Brac to escape the Turks in 1551, the monastery gradually evolved over the centuries as the gorge was planted with vineyard, olive groves, and lavender and bee hives.

We were disappointed to learn that the caretaker wasn’t there when we arrived, but Ante described for us the monastery’s elaborate collection of ceramics, muskets, a piano, a telescope and Venetian paintings.

While unfortunate, it wasn’t nearly as big a disappointment as what occurred in the small airport in Split, where we ended our Dalmatian journey. As we passed through security, I watched, horrified, as one of the agents tossed into the garbage two plastic bottles filled with the homemade brandies I’d purchased from one of our luncheon hosts but had forgotten to put in my checked baggage.

Well, what better excuse for a return visit to the enchanting Dalmatian coast?